Chapter 14: Closer To The Edge

Can you imagine a time when the truth ran free?
The birth of a song, the death of a dream
This never ending story paid for with pride and faith
We all fall short of glory, lost in ourselves

"Gin?" Galen tentatively laid his hand of cards down on the table. "Is that right?"

"Again?" Burke rolled his eyes. "Come on, Galen, give a guy a break."

"I like this game. You said if I did well with this one, you'd teach me 'poker'?" the chimp's nose wiggled excitedly.

"I don't know, I think you're a ringer—"

The door chimed, and Burke looked up from where he slouched in the chair, one leg pulled up next to him. "Come in," he called.

When the door opened to reveal Zeke, Burke's face fell. "Uh, Galen, can we do this another time?"

Galen looked over his shoulder, then quickly rose from his chair. "Of course." The chimp shuffled out the door, brushing past the angel as he stepped into the room.

Burke stood up, nervously rubbing his bandaged hand. "Hey."

"Alan said you wanted to see me." Zeke leaned back against the wall, refusing to come any closer, his face inscrutable.

"Yeah." Pete brought his uninjured hand up to rub across his mouth. "You know what sucks? When Alan's right. I'm sorry, Zeke." He gestured at the chair that Galen recently vacated. "Can we sit down and talk? Please?"

Zeke nodded and pushed off the wall, lowered himself warily into the chair. "How's your hand?"

"Just about healed, thanks to those handy little robots. Itches like crazy." Pete leaned his elbows on the table. "Zeke—"

"I thought Jed was going to release you?"

Burke ducked his head, a flush creeping up his neck. "Well, after my little temper tantrum, he thought it would be a good idea to keep a closer eye on me for another day. Actually, I'm just about to bust outta here." He cleared his throat. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take your head off the other day. You were just trying to look out for me."

Zeke shrugged. "I shouldn't have pushed you so much, either. I know how much helping Alan means to you, I shouldn't have trivialized it."

"Yeah, about that. I… um… I've never been real big on letting people get close to me. And when you said knew what makes me tick, I guess I freaked out a little bit."

"Pete—"

Burke didn't let him finish. "I guess I was worried that if you saw what was really in here," he tapped his temple, "that you wouldn't be so keen to pal around with me, y'know?"

"Pete—"

"Alan's the only one who I ever trusted enough to really let my guard down with, because he's read all the psych reports anyway, and… and Galen's a good friend and all but even he doesn't know—"

"Pete!" Zeke moved around the table, since Burke had retreated further and further from him while he babbled, and laid a hand on his arm. "Hey. I'm still here, aren't I? I've already seen just about everything there is to see. And I hate to break it to you, but you are devastatingly normal. Which is to say, no more screwed up than the rest of us." He gave Burke a wry smile. "Whatever your issues are, trust me when I say I could give them all a run for the money."

Burke cocked an eyebrow, his mouth quirking to one side. "Well, welcome to the club. Next week, we're having jackets made." He absently rubbed at this hand again. "You'll be glad to know that Alan's on your side, by the way, about staying in the city. Or at least seeing if the Elders will let us use it as a home base while we go check out Kirtland, and maybe a couple other places. This area was littered with military installations—"

"Er, about Kirtland." He tugged on Burke's arm, urging him to sit back at the table. "I talked to Mal about it, and he says it's too dangerous to try to get to. There was a lot of radioactive material stored there before the war, and the levels of radiation could be prohibitive."

Burke frowned, his eyebrows furrowing together. "Well, we'll just have to convince him that it's worth the risk."

Virdon chewed on his bottom lip as he read over the data gleaned from their flight recorder disk for what seemed like the hundredth time. He closed his eyes, pressing into them with the heels of his hands as he thought back to his own fuzzy memories of the last hours of their mission. Everything had been going normally as they approached the Alpha Centauri AB system. With the new Hasslein drive on their ship, they completed the trip that took light over four years in only three weeks. That was the first part of their mission, a successful trial of faster-than-light travel. The second part was to survey the terrestrial planet orbiting Sol's closest neighbors in space.

Pete had been rechecking his final planetary approach calculations by hand, an old habit to satisfy a pilot's instinctual distrust of a computer to control the ship. Jonesy had been preparing the computer to receive data from the sensor package they would drop into the planet's atmosphere. But before they could enter the binary system, they started seeing strange readings from the outside sensors. The radiation monitors pegged in the red, just as the astronauts heard a series of popping noises and felt the ship lurch. Every alarm seemed to go off at once, a cacophony that was in turn nearly drowned out by the shriek of stressed metal and the whine of the ship's engines as they struggled to compensate and keep them on course.

And suddenly it was as if a giant hand had reached out and flicked one end of the ship, sending them into a gut-wrenching spin. They didn't even have time to grab their pressurized suits, so if they lost atmosphere, they were goners for sure. He remembered yelling at Jones to activate the homing beacon, then he was thrown against the restraining straps on his chair. He must have blacked out either from smacking his head or the g-forces as the ship spun out of control.

Now they had the flight data to fill in those gaps. While less than a day of subjective time passed on the ship, they slipped through some sort of…short-cut in space and time that threw them all the way back to Earth and a thousand years into the future. The ship had gotten knocked around but good; really it was a miracle that any of them had survived, with only one casualty out of three.

The data gave them a breadcrumb trail that they could follow, retracing their flight to reverse the journey, if—and it was a big if—they could find a working ship. And the hope that swelled inside him was tinged with relief. He finally felt the residual guilt he'd been carrying around for the last year start to lift. Guilt that their crash had been due to human error or could have been prevented somehow. But none of them could have foreseen such an anomaly—a wormhole, Pete had called it—let alone had any sort of plan of what to do when you found one. 'Navigating Temporal-Spatial Wormholes: How Not To Be Completely FUBAR' wasn't exactly part of the Command School curriculum.

He was pulled out of his reverie by the door chiming. Looking up, he called for it to open. Burke leaned against the door frame, trying to look nonchalant.

"Hey, roomie," he called to Virdon as a big grin spread across his face.

"Pete!" Virdon quickly skirted around the table and clapped his friend on the back. "Why didn't you tell me Jed was letting you go today? I would have come over."

"And do what, carry my luggage?" He held up two empty hands. He jerked his head over his shoulder as Zeke came in behind him. "Besides, Zeke made sure I didn't find any trouble on the way here."

"Well, if you're going to be bunking here, we're going to have to figure out some new sleeping arrangements—" Alan waved in the direction of the small bedroom he and Galen shared. He didn't think there'd be enough room for a third.

Zeke spoke up. "Actually, I've got more permanent quarters prepared, not far from here. We can wait until Galen arrives before relocating everyone."

His bracelet beeped, but before he could even raise it to acknowledge, Levi's voice boomed into the room, cold and clipped. "Ezekiel, report to central security. Bring the visitors."

Zeke's brow furrowed together in puzzlement. He opened his mouth to respond, but whatever he was going to say was drowned out by a blaring alarm broadcast from every computer controlled device in the room. Levi's voice erupted from the speakers once more.

"Attention. Attention. The city is under attack. Initiate omega protocol."

Zeke, Burke, and Virdon exchanged a startled look.

"Where's Galen?" Zeke asked. Without waiting for either man to answer, he raised his bracelet. "Computer, locate Galen."

"Galen is fifty meters from your position," came the tinny reply.

"Let's go." He thumbed open the door and turned down the hallway at a jog. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that Burke and Virdon were following. Turning his attention forward, he saw Galen round a corner, coming toward them in his loping shuffle.

"What's happening? Who is attacking?" Galen asked as they converged, his eyes wide and frightened.

"We're going to find out. Come with us, okay?" Zeke tried make it sound like a request and not an order.

They didn't spare breath for any more questions as Zeke led them to the security area. In the corridors, the other residents of the city rushed in every direction. Some were shepherding groups of children to more sheltered quarters, trying to quickly calm their crying and worried questions. And everywhere they looked, weapons had suddenly appeared. Rifles, sidearms, and sometimes heavier munitions were in the hands of every adult they passed.

When they got in the lift and started to ascend, Virdon cleared his throat to finally break the silence. "Zeke?"

Zeke turned a distracted look toward him. "Huh?"

"What's the omega protocol?" he asked quietly.

"Oh. Uh, everyone has assigned duties in the case of an attack or emergency. Those who can fight report to predetermined locations, and those who can't are taken to secure areas and guarded. I should be down in the power plant, to make sure it doesn't get compromised."

"When was the last time it was used?"

"Before my lifetime, or my parents'."

Galen and Burke exchanged glances, both wondering if the situation had anything to do with their recent discoveries.

The lift stopped and Zeke slipped out the door before it even finished opening. They were close to the top of the city. A brief jog brought them to a large room filled with tables and monitoring equipment. Two guards stood outside, both holding rifles and wearing protective armoring. They nodded at Zeke as he led the others past and into the security center.

Malachi and Levi stood shoulder to shoulder, watching a large screen displaying a map schematic. Levi pointed was pointing to an area and conversing quietly with Mal.

"Levi?" Zeke strode up behind them and laid a hand on Levi's shoulder. Both older men turned.

"Zeke. We've been infiltrated by a force of gorillas from the desert."

"Infiltrated? How—"

"They came in one of the dome entrances. They had access codes. We don't know how they got them."

"What about the surveillance cameras, didn't anyone see them coming?"

"The cameras were disabled." He frowned. "This is a planned attack by an organized force. Not like anything we've seen from the gorillas before."

"Their leader," Mal interjected, "appears to be the gorilla from the hypertube depot in Vega. You called him Urko."

"Urko?" Galen exclaimed. "How is that possible?"

"He must have ridden into the desert after us," speculated Virdon, while Burke swore under his breath. Only Urko would be vindictive and relentless enough to ride into the Forbidden Zone to continue pursuing the three fugitives. His quest had obviously gone beyond duty and was now a personal obsession. The Ape Council would never have sanctioned his going into the Forbidden Zone, assuming he was even still following their orders. "Where are they now?"

"The main force has made it down to level three, mostly in the northeast sector. We shut down general access to the central lifts, but they've found the maintenance ladders and stairways." Levi took a pad that was handed to him by an armed and armored woman. He scanned it for a moment. "Reports are coming in from fighting on several levels."

"What we need to know from you," Mal looked at Virdon, Burke, and finally Galen, whose gaze he held, "is where your loyalties lie."

"If Urko's behind this, it's a good bet he knows we're here. Give me weapon, I'll help defend the city," Burke declared. He threw a questioning look at Virdon.

"Look, we're definitely on your side here; I'll do my part," Virdon offered.

Mal continued to watch Galen's face. "Galen?"

"I—" The chimp frowned. "Well, I'm certainly not going to join forces with Urko. But I don't know that I can shoot him in cold blood, either. I… I… I've never wanted to hurt anyone—"

"Galen doesn't even have any training with weapons," Virdon interrupted. "You can expect to send him into the middle of a gun fight!"

Mal nodded. "That's about what I expected. He doesn't have to fight. I just wanted to make sure he wasn't going to betray us."

"Galen," Levi cut off the others' protests, "you can stay here in the command center. Maybe you can even give us some insight into Urko's strategy."

"I'll try, but I don't know that I'll be very helpful."

"Zeke, take Alan and Pete to the armory, get them equipped. They can go with you down to the power plant, see to its defense." Levi reached out and laid his hand over Zeke's heart. "Be careful, son."

The armory adjacent to the security command center was not as crowded as Burke and Virdon expected it to be. Zeke explained that there were other caches of weapons and armor hidden away on every level of the city for emergency situations. The two astronauts were each fitted with a gray vest imbedded with articulated panels of a lightweight material that would absorb the impact from any projectile weapon. They were given open-faced helmets that would protect most of their heads, but leave their hearing and vision unimpaired.

The needler rifles they were issued shot very small caliber rounds that had a tiny explosive charge built into the sharp tip. Burke slotted the stock against his shoulder and looked down the sights to get a feel for the weapon. According to Zeke, the high velocity needles produced very little recoil.

"What's the rate of fire?" Virdon asked.

"On full automatic, a hundred rounds a minute. If you pull the trigger and release, it shoots a burst of three shots. If you flip this switch," he pointed to a thumb lever on the side of the barrel, "it changes to single shot. The magazine holds 200 rounds." He grabbed several plastic cartridges from a shelf and gave a couple to each man. "Extra magazines. When the cartridge is empty, this counter reads zero and it automatically releases the empty. Pull it out and slap in the new one."

"Yeah, the mechanics aren't much different than the rifles we trained with, just a whole lot more firepower," Burke commented, tucking the extra cartridges into his pockets.

Zeke checked a few more fasteners on their armor. "Listen, I'm sorry you guys got dragged into this. It isn't your fight, and it wasn't fair of Mal to ask you to risk yourselves."

Virdon shook his head. "If Urko is behind this, it's our fight as much as yours. And if we are going to try to make Alba our home, then we have just as much to lose as everyone else."

"Zeke, I thought you said that the desert gorillas had given up attacking the city. Why now? What do they want?" Burke asked.

"I don't know. But the fact that they've gotten inside…" Zeke picked up his own rifle with a worried frown. "Well, whatever their strategy, we can't let them get to the main power plant. If they knock that out, it could destroy the entire city. You ready?"

At a nod from both men, Zeke hoisted his own rifle and led them at a fast pace back to the central lift. The power plant was at the bottom of shaft, in the bowels of the city. The fusion reactor at its core was small, but produced enough energy to keep the city running. Environmental control and waste recycling were nearby, as the entire system was integrated and self-sustaining.

When Zeke tried to open the lift doors, a computerized voice requested a DNA scan for identity confirmation. Zeke pressed his thumb into a small indentation below the control panel to provide the required blood sample. After a scant few seconds delay, the door slid open.

"Power plant level," instructed Zeke. The lift began to drop rapidly. A moment later, a staccato of pops and crunching noises filled the small space as the transparent walls of the lift cracked and pitted from weapons' fire. Burke and Virdon instinctively hunched down and huddled against the interior wall, turning their faces away from the threat. Zeke squatted as best he could a moment later, after hitting the emergency stop.

"We have to get out of here—too vulnerable!" As the door opened, Zeke motioned to the others to follow him. Burke and Virdon, still crouching low, ducked out into the hallway for a quick look, rifles held at the ready. They followed Zeke when they saw it was clear of any enemies.

Zeke leaned back against the smooth metal of the hallway. "They must have gotten deeper into the city. We're twenty levels down. The central shaft isn't safe. We'll have to take auxiliary lifts." His voice shook almost as much as his hands.

"Okay, okay," Virdon soothed. "Take a sec, Zeke. We don't want to go rushing blindly into anything."

"I—" Zeke began, then took a deep breath. "It's a lot different than the simulations. I've never been in actual combat before…."

Burke smirked. "Don't worry, we have. What's the plan, Al?" He automatically deferred to Virdon's command.

"I'll take point. Pete, you bring up the rear. Zeke, you just tell us where to go. We'll get you where you need to be. Ready?"

Zeke nodded. "Down this corridor, then turn left."

Virdon hoisted his rifle up to his shoulder again. "Fast and quiet, people. Go."

Virdon quick walked in the direction Zeke had pointed, sighting down the barrel of his weapon as he moved. Burke shepherded Zeke along a few feet back, while he scanned behind them with his rifle. At the first corner, Virdon motioned for them all to flatten against the wall while he ducked around it. A wave of his hand indicated they should continue. They made a couple more turns the same way; Virdon's internal compass told him they were working their way clockwise around the level and further from the central chasm.

They could see the door to the auxiliary lift at the end of the corridor when Virdon heard the sharp crack of a weapon being fired and he was slammed into the wall, bullets raking across his torso.

"Alan!" Burke cried out. He felt slivers of hot metal brush against his cheek, stinging, as blackened gouges appeared in the wall next to his head. He glimpsed a shaggy form pulling back into a side corridor as he pushed Zeke around a corner and pulled Virdon after him.

Virdon clamped a hand over his chest, sucking air. Burke did a quick check for wounds, but other than a cut on his arm from flying shrapnel, Virdon seemed unbloodied. Three dents in the armor across his chest showed how close he'd come to being killed.

"You hurt?" Burke shouted as ducked into the hallway and fired off a burst.

"Just bruised and winded," Virdon gasped. "Zeke, is there another way we can go?"

"Yeah, we can—"

"Burke! Virdon!" The two astronauts exchanged a surprised look. "Lay down your weapons and surrender, and I'll let your friend live!" Urko's voice called from the other side of the hallway.